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Bull cycle

Bitcoin notches new record high amid “Uptober” surge

Bitcoin surged over $125,500 for the first time on Saturday.

Uptober has arrived.

bitcoin reached an all-time high on Saturday, crossing $125,500 for the first time not even two months after hitting its previous record. The asset is up over 100% in the past year.

Kyle Chassé, founder of MV Global, told Sherwood News that this all‑time high is being driven from the top down.

“Spot ETF flows are vacuuming up supply every day — that’s the clearest sign Wall Street is here. ‘Uptober’ helps, and the market is shrugging off the shutdown headlines and political noise because bitcoin is the neutral, non‑sovereign asset people use as insurance against policy risk and fiat debasement,” Chassé said.

He said that if ETF inflows keep soaking up coins anywhere near current run rates, reaching $145,000 by year‑end is “very doable.”

“Volatility will pop up, but the base case for this bull cycle is solid,” he said.

Lucas Kiely, founder of Future Digital Capital Management, noted that caution is warranted at this point in the cycle.

“Euphoria leads to leverage, and bigger price swings put overleveraged traders at risk of liquidations. This can easily lead to liquidation cascades, wiping out traders who have taken on too much uncalculated risk,” he said.

Meanwhile, bitcoin ETF inflows had their second-best week since inception in January 2024, raking in $3.2 billion. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, with $95 billion in assets under management, continues to lead the pack, seeing $1.8 billion in inflows last week.

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Meme coins are low-key back to start the year, with pepe taking the early lead in 2026 gains

The meme-based pepe is the fastest horse in the crypto race in the new year so far, with the price of the cryptocurrency increasing 34% in the last 24 hours.

The price swing resulted in the liquidation of nearly $9.9 million worth of pepe short positions in the last 24 hours, data from CoinGlass shows. 

The frog-based coin has seen a 24-hour trading volume of nearly $1.6 billion and is not the only meme coin outpacing the broader crypto market.

Dogecoin, shiba inu, and PUMP have each risen between 8.4% and 10.9% in the last 24 hours, joining pepe as the top gainers in the period, a sign of life for meme tokens, which as a category lost more than half their value last year. 

$1.2B

XRP ETFs have now crossed $1 billion in assets since the funds launched, according to SoSoValue, which shows total assets of $1.18 billion.

In September, the SEC approved generic listing standards, which paved the way for speedier listings and opened the floodgates for these products, and shortly after, Rex-Osprey launched the first spot XRP ETF available in the US.

Canary followed suit in November, launching an ETF trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker XRPC, which saw a record $58.5 million in trading volume on its first day. It’s the largest XRP ETF in the US, with $342 million in assets.

Grayscale, Bitwise, and Franklin Templeton also launched their own XRP ETFs in November. On December 11, 21Shares joined the XRP fund party.

It’s a noteworthy green shoot in the crypto space, as bitcoin and its ETFs have struggled, and XRP itself is down nearly 15% over the past month.

Jake Hanley, managing director and senior portfolio specialist at Teucrium Investment Advisors — which launched the first-ever XRP-based ETF in April, the 2x Long Daily XRP ETF — told Sherwood News that he is not surprised to see this level of interest in the XRP ETFs.

“We have long held that XRP and the Ripple ecosystem present a unique investment case among crypto assets. Crossing the $1 billion mark is yet another signal of the significant vote of confidence investors have in this increasingly important asset and ecosystem,” Hanley said.

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